


Impasto

by typefortydeductions



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mostly fluff though, bucky becoming comfortable with himself again, steve is still an artist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 19:43:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1755467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typefortydeductions/pseuds/typefortydeductions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve gets lost in art, and Bucky finds himself again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impasto

**Author's Note:**

> With my thanks to [Nyla](http://nylakh.tumblr.com) for making beautiful art and inspiring this in the first place.

Steve finds out about the art before he finds out about Bucky. It’s part of the pack SHIELD hands him: ‘The Cultural Influence of Captain America’. The movies are fine, mainly laughable and overtly patriotic – but then, so had been the ones he’d made during the war. The essays and academic debates are a little odd, and feel somehow detached, unrelated to him. They’re discussing the world’s first superhero, not Steve Rogers. The art is something else though. Some of it he skips straight past – recruitment posters, formal military portraits, _pin-up posters_ (his cheeks flush, but it still doesn’t feel like _him_ ), but some of it. Some of it. There’s this one artist who doesn’t seem to care all that much about Captain America. He focuses on the war years, on the Howling Commandos, on _Bucky_. Steve is there – his profile half-hidden behind Dum-Dum’s shoulder, eyes visible in the firelight, trying to supress a laugh at one of Jim’s jokes – but he’s part of a whole, which is how it should be. It feels more real than anything else he’s found in this century, and he can hardly bear to look away. He looks up the artist online, asks Pepper if she knows of any showings, and two weeks later finds himself in a glossy Williamsburg studio, staring up at the faces of his friends.

The canvases are huge, sweeping layers of oils, rough and thick enough that the paint almost appears to be coming out of the canvas. They are shockingly physical, an almost tangible force of memory and life and feeling and Steve – his breath is caught in his throat, eyes and chest aching, and—  
There’s this one of Bucky, and Steve doesn’t know how the artist knew, because he’s pretty sure he hasn’t seen any pictures like this in the Smithsonian, but Bucky, he’s – he’s looking at Steve like he always looked when he didn’t think Steve could see. Only Steve’s not in the picture, not really, just the shadow of his shoulder, out of reach, and Bucky is staring, his eyes wounded and wanting and hollow with pain and the room feels too small, heart beating too hard and how did they know, how did they _know_ —

They know, as it turns out, because the artist is the grandson of Jim Morita, with the same sharp-eyed smile and refusal to varnish the truth. They become friends, because they both miss Jim and they love art, and that is enough to build something. Leo tells Steve all about his grandfather, and about his own art, his cute girlfriend and the apartment they’re saving up to buy. Steve tells Leo the stories that Jim never got round to telling, about how he can’t get over inflation, and, eventually, about Bucky.

“I have sketches, I can show what he used to—I have a lot of sketches.” And he does, God help him, wrinkled pages he can hardly bare to look at sometimes, but needs to, needs to keep tracing the familiar angles of Bucky’s face, every new line he draws a promise to never forget. It’s stupid – Steve knows the serum gave him a photographic memory, has proved it time and time again, but he can’t help but worry that Bucky’s memory will start to slip through his fingers. He always knew Bucky was too good for him to hold onto.

Leo whistles when he sees the sketches, kindly refrains from commenting on the sheer volume, and turns the pages with a touch just short of reverent.  
“You don’t need me for this, Cap. You got a whole lot of talent right here; you don’t need me, not really.” Except he’s wrong. Steve does need him. Bucky doesn’t feel solid in his fingers, and Steve feels desperate, like he’s holding on too hard. In Leo’s hands he feels real, solid. Colours and reflection and light that refuse to let him forget a single thing. Leo agrees, of course, and shuts himself away in his studio with piles of notes and Steve’s sketchbooks. Steve refuses to see it until it’s done, can’t bear to see unfinished lines and fragmented colour, like that’s all Bucky could be. But, when Leo finally shows him, he’s glad he waited. Leo has painted Bucky after a long day at work: he’s covered in dirt, hair damp with sweat, but he’s laughing, head thrown back, hand thrust out to support himself on the table. Steve’s painted shadow falls across the sun-dappled floor, his body just out of frame, and he can almost, he can almost, if he hunches his shoulders he can almost, can almost pretend that it’s his shadow, and that any moment Bucky will lift his head, meet his gaze, and he will know—

(Except, as it turns out, Bucky does know, he knows him, he knows _him_ , he remembers, he _knows _–)__

 

 

……………………………………………………

 

Bucky finds his portrait about five minutes after they leave Stark Tower. He looks at it with something akin to wonder in his eyes for about half a second, before collapsing into hysterical laughter. Steve tries to explain, but Bucky just laughs louder.

“You mean, not only did you make this poor guy listen to you pine—“ Steve opens his mouth to object, but Bucky just dismisses him with a flap of his hand “—but then you actually made him, like, paint a picture of me? Steve, buddy, you gotta stop foisting your crush onto unsuspecting citizens.”

Steve glares at a spot just behind Bucky’s left shoulder, mumbles at him.  
“S’Jim’s grandson, was doin’ it anyway.” Bucky’s hand snaps up with a delighted grin, and, too late, Steve realises his mistake.

Inevitably, Leo and Bucky hit it off immediately, largely bonding over laughing at Steve, and it’s only a week before he introduces him to Nat and Sam, and they form some sort of _club_ , which appears to involve far more jogging than Leo really wants, significantly more coffee than Sam thinks is strictly advisable, and an awful lot more Disney movies than either Steve or Bucky ever thought was possible (Steve spends hours studying the artwork, the vivacity and smoothness of the animation, can’t get over how real it seems).

So when Pepper contacts him to ask him about the exhibition, Bucky’s obvious affection for Leo makes half the decision for him. There’s a big retrospective of Captain America art about to open at MOMA, and Steve has, of course, been invited. It feels self-indulgent and embarrassing and kind of ridiculous—but the artist in Steve can’t ignore the fact that he inspired people to create, and even if much of that was only a figure that is more fiction than fact, it seems petty to ignore that passion in order to save a few blushes. Some of Leo’s work will be there, as well as other paintings of the Howling Commandos, and a scattering of The Avengers, but as Steve goes through the listings he notices the marked absence of _Bucky_. James Buchanan Barnes, war hero, features prominently, but there is nothing of Bucky as he is now, and Steve—

He can’t have that. Can’t, _won’t_ have Bucky erased now, not after everything.

It’s not selfish, not really. It’s not like he needs another picture of Bucky, not with the real thing. It’s not for him. The public backlash may have died down somewhat, but there are still angry mutterings out there, and none of them know Bucky as he is now, not really. Bucky isn’t going to come out and do press conferences, and Steve would never make him, but if anyone can show the public who Bucky is _now_ , who he really is, without actually involving Bucky himself, it’s Leo. (And it’s for Bucky too, for the half-second of awe and disbelief in his eyes, the moment where he’d thought of a self that people had thought worth painting, worth preserving, and Steve wants him to have that now. To show him that the person he is now is still art, still something beautiful and alive and real.)

Leo tries again to convince him to use his own sketches, talks about how they could be turned into something bigger, more substantial, and Steve thinks of the works he has at home. The huge, sweeping drawings in graphite and ink and charcoal, stark and visceral. Thinks of Bucky’s face, eyes huge in his face as he traced his finger along the lines, hovering just of the edge of the surface, so worried about smudging everything. Thinks about the way he’d traced the same finger along Steve’s jaw, the bridge of his nose, the curve of his eyebrow. His lower lip. His eyelids. Thinks of the tears on his face he felt when they kissed, not sure if they were his or Bucky’s or both, mingling on their cheeks like a benediction. Remembers the hitch in Bucky’s breath, the way he sits, cross-legged, when Steve is drawing. His scowl when Steve trails his charcoal-smudged fingers along Bucky’s collarbone, lines like ash and soot, echoes of fire, and the way his chest burns when Bucky slaps his fingers away to pull him close instead.

He smiles ruefully at Leo, runs a hand through his hair.  
“Don’t want it to be about me, y’know? Don’t want it to be about Captain America’s art. I want it to be about – it needs to be about Bucky.”

Bucky is reluctant when he asks him, tries to laugh it off, but the way his voice can’t quite stay steady when he jokes “Who’d wanna paint me now, Stevie?” is all the confirmation Steve needs. He brings Bucky along to the studio, and then promptly disappears. This is for Bucky, not him, and neither of them needs him hovering like the mother hen Sam so often accuses him of being. Bucky comes home, tired, loose. He won’t talk about it but Steve catches him tying his hair up more often, wearing hair elastics on his wrists, and one day he comes back with half the sides shaved off and blue streaks. Which. Well, Steve may have told Nat he wasn’t ready for the girl with the lip ring, but he’s always been ready for whatever Bucky wanted to throw at him, and the way Bucky smirks, the way he cocks his head, that’s all Steve’s ever needed anyway.

They don’t let him see it until the exhibition. Steve weaves in and out of the crowd, dodging questions and compliments with a bland smile and a nod, heads to the back and—stops. Bucky is shirtless, one hand propping up his chin, light reflecting off the curve of his back, torso half in shadow. He is looking up at something just out of frame, half a smile on his face. His feet are bare, crossed at the ankles, toes twisting together in a manner that seems oddly childlike. It makes something in Steve’s chest tighten, like echoes of forgetting how to breathe. He’s holding something – Steve walks closer, and his breath catches. He’s holding Steve’s dog-tags in his other hand, paint in rough strokes as if capturing the motion of his thumb smoothing over the metal. His eyes are soft, open. He looks – God, he looks _beautiful_. There’s a warm gust of breath on his neck, and Steve reaches behind him, feels for Bucky’s left hand. Metal fingers wrap around his, a chin hooks onto his shoulder.  
“Whaddya think?” his voice is deliberately light, and Steve turns his head to brush a whisper of a kiss upon Bucky’s forehead.  
“Think you look real pretty, Buck” he drawls, reaching for Bucky’s other hand so that he can wrap it around his waist, feel the solid ( _real_ ) line of him pressed up against his back. “Think maybe you should look into modelling – see if we can find you a drapin’ sheet somewhere, perhaps.” Bucky snorts, knocks his head against Steve’s.  
“Don’t you know it, punk.” He grins, bright and sharp. “Prettiest damn thing in this room.” Steve turns, rests his forehead against Bucky’s.  
“I think you look happy, Bucky. I think you look like you could be happy.”


End file.
